Anna Wintour, Will Smith, clearing your head, and news from elsewhere
Good morning, delegates!
Special shoutout to anyone who didn’t go to sleep; we’re pulling for you. This daily email from Quartz is your guide to all the news and chatter from Cannes Lions 2016.
Today will be even sunnier and hotter than the last few, with a high temperature of 27°C (81°F). Friday, by the way, is shaping up to be the hottest day of the week. Sunscreen: don’t leave home without it.
Yesterday’s highlights at the festival
Anna Wintour decried “speed and spectacle” in creative fields. The editor-in-chief of Vogue and artistic director of Condé Nast was brutally critical of other publishers (“Pleasing an audience doesn’t mean twisting your editorial around search engine optimization and Facebook algorithms”), some fashion designers (“studded to the hilt with flash and iPhone-ready showmanship”), and even a few politicians (“Politics is not traditionally a creative industry, but in America it’s currently being dominated by people with very active imaginations”). She said audiences value sincerity and ambition, praising work ranging from Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” to Vanity Fair’s Caitlyn Jenner cover to Demna Gvasalia’s first collections for Balenciaga. “You can’t cut our way to creativity,” Wintour said.
“Smoke and mirrors in marketing and sales is over,” said Will Smith. “People are going to know really quickly and globally whether a product keeps its promises.” As an example, the actor repeatedly made fun of his 1999 hit film Wild Wild West. “I had so much success that I started to taste global blood and my focus shifted from my artistry to winning,” Smith said. “I have to be in tune with their needs and not trick them into going to see Wild Wild West.”
Location-based throw-down. On the first day of Lions Innovation, two sessions laid out dueling visions for the future of mobile marketing. Estimote‘s Steve Cheney was all about beacons; after all, his company has long bet on Bluetooth radio waves as the best way to identify precisely where people are. But 50 meters away, the founders of Lisnr were trashing beacons and touting their own solution, which relies on sound waves only your phone can hear. Both technologies are hampered by requiring users to download an app to pick up the signals. “It’s an issue,” Cheney said, “but we think it will be solved.” He pointed to Google’s Physical Web initiative as a promising development.
More Lions. The Grand Prix for Creative Effectiveness went to Adam&eveDDB’s penguin-themed teaser campaign for the John Lewis Christmas ad. Dentsu won Design for Panasonic’s playful take on alternative electricity. In the first year for Digital Craft, the category was won by 84.Paris for its interactive history of a French music label. Colenso BBDO won the Grand Prix in Outdoor for a New Zealand beer campaign. Forsman & Bodenfors won PR for promoting a Swedish supermarket chain’s organic food. And Product Design went to Google Creative Lab’s smart clothing.
What everyone is talking about
Press releases. Kidding, no one is talking about press releases. But there sure are a lot of them! Tech companies were particularly busy yesterday, with Facebook and Twitter trading announcements from Cannes. Facebook enhanced some of its ad offerings and tools for marketers, and reveled that Instagram now has 500 million monthly active users (80% of them outside the US). Twitter, on the other hand, is all about video here, extending the max length on its flagship app and Vine. Plus, it released a new app that helps famous people tweet. Your move, Snapchat.
Better forms of targeting. A lot of people around the Festival have been criticizing traditional forms of ad targeting like dayparting and demographics. Yes, ’twas always thus, but the conversation is more interesting now as companies collect news and varied kinds of data. Spotify’s head of product Shiva Rajaraman said the music streaming service was increasingly focused on curating playlists based on listener moods. Tim Armstrong said his company, AOL, and its parent, Verizon, had access to more information than rivals like Facebook and Google. “We have a picture of the phone overall,” he said. In a separate interview, AOL’s David Shing said it was time to stop targeting millennials as a single group: “They don’t all stand on a hoverboard with headphones in and looking at their devices the entire time.”
Clearing your head. It’s only Wednesday. If you need to clear your head, there’s no shortage of amazing art in the area. Two particularly chill and inspiring locations are Fondation Maeght, the modern art museum and sculpture garden on a hill overlooking, and Chapelle du Rosaire, a tiny chapel designed, from the architecture to the priests’ garments, by Henri Matisse. Though he was not religious himself, Matisse considered the chapel his “masterpiece,” and that’s not an overstatement. Under an hour away from Cannes by car, it’s the best piece of art in the French Riviera.
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News from around the world
Tesla offered to buy SolarCity for $2.8 billion. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is also chairman of the rooftop-solar firm, whose CEO is Musk’s first cousin Lyndon Rive—among other entanglements. Tesla shares plunged more than 13% in extended trading, amounting to a loss in value of about $4.3 billion.
US regulators approved a study of gene-editing in humans. A biosafety and ethics panel cleared the use of the CRISPR-Cas9 technology for creating genetically altered immune cells to fight cancer. The study, funded by tech billionaire Sean Parker, still needs approval from the US Food and Drug Administration.
The Clinton Foundation was reportedly hacked. Russian hackers broke into its networks, according to Bloomberg, and might have accessed embarrassing information about US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her family. Russian hackers earlier breached servers of the Democratic National Committee.
Matters of debate
Annual pay raises don’t work. They neither motivate workers nor keep them from leaving for a better-paying job.
Brexit would crush the pound. A severe devaluation could wreak havoc on Britain’s economy, says George Soros.
American politics have slowly gone insane. Unless the problem is addressed, it will only get worse.
Surprising discoveries
Couples who share housework have more sex. It’s an inversion of earlier trends, when couples with “traditional” setups were the ones getting lucky.
The future of cremation may be dissolving bodies and flushing the remains. Canada is keeping a close eye on an allegedly eco-friendly funeral home.
Refugees are taking Palermo’s city center back from the mafia. One of the world’s oldest cities is coming back to life.
Our best wishes for an inspiring day at the festival. Please send any news, tips, creative new forms of ad targeting, and modern art recommendations to me, Zach Seward, at [email protected].
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